Immediately after professing his “love” of inflation at a White House event, Donald Trump went on to tell reporters on Wednesday afternoon about an operation he’s been eager to disclose.
“You know, I can say it now, something you didn’t know,” the president said. “You know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran — until right now.” He said this operation involved 22 ships that traveled “with no lights” and went undetected because Iranians “don’t have any radar because we blasted the crap out of it.”
Trump added, by way of a statement published to his social media platform, that this was “a secret mission.”
Soon after, during a congressional hearing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was asked if he knew what the president was talking about. The Cabinet secretary conceded he was “unaware” of the developments Trump described, and he assured lawmakers the president was merely “talking casually.”
That wasn’t much of an answer, and it left unresolved the obvious underlying questions: Had Trump disclosed an actual secret mission? Had he kept it from his own energy secretary?